Canola Oil Controversy

An interesting discussion came up yesterday about canola oil. Is it good or not? It gets a stamp of approval from all the official diet authorities, but the underground rumor is that it’s no good for you.

A little research reveals that the naysayers may have it, but it is hard to say for sure. If you want to get the full story, check out “The Great Con-ola” by Sally Fallon and Mary Emig, PhD.

It is interesting to learn that the word “canola” is purely a marketing invention. The word was designed to reflect the idea of “Canadian oil” because it was a Canadian who first learned how to genetically manipulate the rapeseed to reduce its levels of toxic erucic acid.

They had originally called it LEAR oil (for Low Erucic Acid Rapeseed oil), but that didn’t have much marketing appeal. Meanwhile, “canola” evoked images of “can do” and “payola” — both of which evoked positive marketing images. And thus an industry was born!

Again, the jury is still out on canola oil at the end of the day. However, we tend to agree with Mark Sisson in this post suggesting to avoid canola oil altogether when there are so many better options out there: olive oil, lard, ghee, butter, coconut oil, walnut oil, avocado oil, macadamia nut oil, etc.

Besides, as he also points out, it seems a bit strange to ingest any food that has to be deodorized before you’ll buy it. That just doesn’t seem right, does it?